Character sketches of Radical Three

Chrys is short for Chrysacolla, which suits hir much better than Emily. Chrys has black hair with a green streak in it that matches hir eyes. Ze’s shortish, and likes to wear leather, sequins, makeup, and bright colors. Ze’s in Shakespeare Performance Troupe, and is in fact assistant directing the latest performance of Othello. This conflicts with the startup of GenderQuest, the club ze and Whitney are co-presidents of, which is dedicated to making a safe space for transgender and gender non-conforming people. Parties, friendliness, and mingling are second nature to hir, but ze’s learned to be a little reserved around people who might be transphobic, and is likely to be defensive around said people, due to the very small amount of people who acknowledge hir identity. Ze’s a scientist, and a chemistry major. Ze identifies as genderfluid, Ravenclaw, and pansexual.

Whitney was born Whitney, and when he came out as male, he decided to keep it, since it’s actually a unisex name and the touch of femininity suits his personality. It really fazed his family and friends when he came out, and in fact it took him a while to figure out what was going on himself, since he presents as so feminine. He has all the stereotypes: hand gestures, stances, catchphrases. Although he’s happier now he knows he’s just a very femme gay man, he’s gifted at seeing both sides to every story, and gets how easy it was for everyone to mix up his gender and gender presentation, so he’s generally pretty laid-back about the whole topic, and tends to be the one people with questions go to. He’s a very patient and understanding person, too, which helps..He loves drag culture and dreams of being able to go out to clubs in drag without feeling dysphoric. He’s very careful about keeping his hair bleached and styled, and wears feather boas constantly. He’d love to go into the fashion or modelling industry, and generally settles for photography. His parents want him to get a good degree, so he’s debating doing art, which would irritate them, or business, which would please them and eventually be quite useful in the industry, but which he also expects will be very dull. There’s speculation on what color his hair is under the bleach. The current best guess is ginger. He and Chrys run GenderQuest together. Ravenclaw on the edge of Hufflepuff.

Ella is short for Eloise. She comes off as a bit of a ditz and also about twelve years old, which is a combination of her style choices (overalls? Really?), blonde pigtails, and bouncy demeanor. She has a tendency to ramble to the point of monologue, but it’s born out of high energy and extreme extroversion rather than disrespect, and when she asks you a question, she’ll give you her full attention while you answer. And I mean her full attention. It can be a little heady. She adores the Backstreet Boys. Despite the airhead first impression, though, she’s a person you want in your corner, a kind soul who’s loyal to the end and an environmentalist, a Hufflepuff in all the best ways. She’s the token cisgender straight person, but she plays it well, and pretty much everyone has a soft spot for her. She’s Leandra’s bio lab partner and a frequenter of Doublestar Sci-fi/Fantasy club. 

Sorry y'all for the slowdown in posting! It's been a difficult couple weeks. 

Luna

By Julie Anne Peters

Regan can't get out from under the shadow of her older brother. At school, her teachers expect her to be as brilliant as Liam is. And everything else in her life is impacted by the fact that Liam is transgender, and Regan is his only support system. Regan loves her brother, and so she lets him use her room at night to dress up, put on makeup, and become his real self: Luna, a confident drama queen obsessed with her looks. But the pressure of the closet is getting to Liam, and Regan becomes his bodyguard and moral support as he begins to let Luna out in public. Regan really does love her brother. But the pressure of lying aroun
d the secret of Luna to everyone is messing up her relationships with her parents, her friends, and the cute new guy at school, and something has to change.

I didn't like Regan's way of thinking of Luna and Liam as two separate people with separate pronouns, but it kind of makes sense in character. Otherwise, the plot was enthralling and unpredictable, and Regan's stress over juggling all the lies is treated as valid but not less important than Liam/Luna's struggle with dysphoria. It's an angle not usually seen, but important not just for trans stories, but all forms of queerness and also mental illness. When you lean on one person for your whole support system, and they can't talk to anyone else about it, it takes a toll on them. It's safer and healthier for both of you if you can develop a wider support network, so you don't have to worry about slipping through the grasp of any one person, and they feel like they have the ability to say "Not today."

Overall rating: 4/5.

Project upshot: It's an important angle to keep in mind for the story. How is Jimena taking all this?

Vivaldi in the Dark (and sequels)

by Matthew J. Metzger

This one has absolutely nothing to do with trans* topics, but includes gay, bisexual, asexual, and experimenting characters, and these books are wonderful, and Matt deserves some free publicity, so you're getting a review anyway.

Vivaldi in the Dark, The Devil's Trill Sonata, and Rhapsody on a Theme are a trilogy exploring Jayden and Darren throughout the course of their relationship. So as to avoid spoilers, I'll only summarize the first one. When Jayden discovers a wild-haired, blunt boy practicing Vivaldi, he doesn't expect the prodigy to become his defender against schoolyard bullies. He doesn't expect to fall head-over-heels with Darren and his violin playing. But what he absolutely never imagined is that Darren struggles with severe depression that will impact Jayden's whole life if they pursue a relationship. Trigger warnings over the course of the trilogy include depression, panic attacks, self-harm, suicide, violence by mugging, car accidents, and poor reactions to medication.

They're beautifully contrasting characters. Darren is brusk, lacking a brain-to-mouth filter and rarely willing to talk about feelings. His father pressures him daily to become ever better at the violin, never listening to Darren, who doesn't want to go into music. Jayden is naive by comparison, despite being out at school as gay. His parents love him completely and constantly have his back as he struggles to understand Darren. Jayden falls in love with Darren for his violin playing, but it grows into something much stronger and much more powerful. Jayden's optimism combined with Darren's bluntness keeps a reader hooked and waiting to find out if love will conquer all...if it even can.
 Matt's books, especially Rhapsody on a Theme, have a tendency to start in odd places, and definitely eschew the traditional plotline of coming to a climax that the characters got themselves into and then ending. In multiple places, events happen that are completely random and out of the characters' control. The effect this has, though, is to keep us constantly guessing and unsure what the consequences will be. Especially in RoaT, he removes the surety of 'well, we're twenty pages from the end, this is definitely the climax' and that removes the surety that things will turn out a certain way. Matt tackles challenges like convincingly emotionally aging characters, writing from two points of view in two different places, and realistically describing the struggle with mental illness like a pro. The writing gets ever better throughout the trilogy. I have only two complaints with the whole series.  Jayden thinks Darren's violin playing worsens his depression, and I never noticed a connection...could have been me being oblivious, though. And Darren comes to completely rely on Jayden, saying, essentially, that he can't live without him, and nobody comments on how a relationship can't be healthy if one partner feels they can't leave the relationship--whether they want to or not, it's still trapping them. I'm willing to forgive it this, because it is a romance, as long as I can register with y'all that you should never feel like you cannot survive losing any given person, and that if you do, you're not in a healthy or stable place with yourself or with the other person.

Overall rating:
Vivaldi in the Dark: 4/5
The Devil's Trill Sonata: 5/5
Rhapsody on a Theme: 5/5

Project upshot: Absolutely nothing, but you should read them anyway and buy copies for all your friends.

Transition: The Story of How I Became a Man

by Chaz Bono

Bono takes us through his tomboy childhood, his adolescence and young adulthood of being an activist and identifying as a lesbian, and his discovery that he is transgender and eventual pursuit of transition. Trigger warnings for life with and death from cancer, drug addiction.

It was a very honest, forthright look at the life of a human being under various types of great pressure. Chaz talks about his life dating women much older and younger than him, his abuse of prescription drugs, his struggle with staying clean, and the very real damage not transitioning did to him. It acts as a reminder not to let fear control our lives, especially when it concerns something important to us, and the consequences thereof. Transition is a story I imagine many trans people could relate to, and pretty much any queer person who had a severe chance of losing the most important people in their lives over coming out. It was very long, though!

Overall rating: 3/5